Open Access
Computational Approaches for Supporting Combination Therapy in the Post-Aducanumab Era in Alzheimer’s Disease
Author(s) -
Hugo Geerts,
Piet Van Der Graaf
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of alzheimer's disease reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2542-4823
DOI - 10.3233/adr-210039
Subject(s) - computer science , modalities , artificial intelligence , personalized medicine , machine learning , precision medicine , clinical trial , disease , bioinformatics , medicine , pathology , social science , sociology , biology
With the approval of aducanumab on the “Accelerated Approval Pathway” and the recognition of amyloid load as a surrogate marker, new successful therapeutic approaches will be driven by combination therapy as was the case in oncology after the launch of immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the sheer number of therapeutic combinations substantially complicates the search for optimal combinations. Data-driven approaches based on large databases or electronic health records can identify optimal combinations and often using artificial intelligence or machine learning to crunch through many possible combinations but are limited to the pharmacology of existing marketed drugs and are highly dependent upon the quality of the training sets. Knowledge-driven in silico modeling approaches use multi-scale biophysically realistic models of neuroanatomy, physiology, and pathology and can be personalized with individual patient comedications, disease state, and genotypes to create ‘virtual twin patients’. Such models simulate effects on action potential dynamics of anatomically informed neuronal circuits driving functional clinical readouts. Informed by data-driven approaches this knowledge-driven modeling could systematically and quantitatively simulate all possible target combinations for a maximal synergistic effect on a clinically relevant functional outcome. This approach seamlessly integrates pharmacokinetic modeling of different therapeutic modalities. A crucial requirement to constrain the parameters is the access to preferably anonymized individual patient data from completed clinical trials with various selective compounds. We believe that the combination of data- and knowledge driven modeling could be a game changer to find a cure for this devastating disease that affects the most complex organ of the universe.